Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 5th July)

Best Days: Average but workable waves over the weekend. Tues/Wed will deliver the best surf of the forecast period with a decent S/SE groundswell and a (generally) light offshore breeze.

Recap: Onshore winds have made for pretty average surf conditions over the last few days. There’s been no shortage of size with generally a 3-4ft blend of E’ly and E/NE swell, with occasional bigger bombs pushing 4-5ft (though they’ve been pretty inconsistent). 

This weekend (July 6 - 7)

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No major change to the weekend. We’re looking at gradually easing E/NE and E’ly swells from today, and light to moderate onshore winds from the E/NE on Saturday, tending N/NE on Sunday.

Thanks to a lack of synoptic wind, even if we see a period of light winds early mornings, surf conditions will still be lumpy on top. So, expect average waves for the most part but it’ll be quite workable.

Saturday morning will have the most potential for size with stray 4ft+ sets at exposed beaches (though generally 2-3ft for the most part). Expect wave heights to level out into the 2-3ft+ range for Sunday morning, a little smaller by the afternoon.

Next week (July 8 onwards)

A broad ridge of high-pressure well out to the east of New Zealand is displaying an impressive E’ly fetch on its northern flank, though it’s a long way from our region and not particularly well aimed within our swell window. It should generally a long spell of background E/NE swell for most of next week - not enough to work around, but enough to keep the coast from becoming flat (in the absence of any other swells). 

Fortunately, we have a really nice S/SE groundswell on the way, generated by an intense polar low developing off the ice shelf SW of New Zealand over the weekend (see below). Although not well aligned within our swell window, it’s a powerful system and we should pick up a decent spread of groundswell, building through Tuesday with 3-4ft sets at south facing beaches and bigger bombs at offshore bombies and reliable south swell magnets (also, nice to see our model picking up this swell now - it missed it Wednesday - but it’s undercalling this event IMO).

As a side note, because of the way this system develops across the eastern periphery of our swell window, I am expecting the swell to be a little flukier than normal though so your hit rate will vary from coast to coast. It's definitely worth working around though.

As for local conditions, we’ve got a reasonably good run coming up with a series of weak fronts alternating the airstream from the north-west through south-west all week. We may see brief periods of fresh SW (maybe even S/SW wind) in the wake of each front, but I don’t think they’ll cause too much hassle. 

A much more powerful mid-latitude frontal system will cross the region into Friday, bringing about the potential for a large short range S’ly swell next weekend. More one that in Monday’s notes. 

Have a great weekend!